All Homes Lead To The Dog Park
by Dark Akuma Hunter
Summary: A possible anomaly from a town outside of Night Vale draws curious Carlos out to investigate. He would soon find out that somehow everything always led back to the Dog Park. Mentions of Celos. Randomness.


**A/N: This began as an original story, but it lacked plot and logic, so I made it into something illogical and confusing instead.**

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><p><strong>All Homes Lead To The Dog Park:<strong>

The house upon the small hill just outside of town was massive, a grandiose old manor-style home made from sleek wood. It was two stories tall, and an elaborate porch encircled the ground floor. Near the front door, on the side of the porch which overlooked the town, sat an old swing-seat. It was varnished wood, not tacky fabric pulled over a metal frame like some of the things you'd find in stores these days. On windy days it swung silently, gently to and fro.

As far as the townspeople knew, the house had been silent – and so assumedly empty – for as long as they could remember. Their children had made a tradition of daring each other to go as near as they dared to the manor, most notably on Halloween night, cashing in on the already eerie atmosphere provided by the night to bring further anxiety to the challenge. It was they who testified, when asked, as to the condition of the house.

Other than its apparent state of well-kept abandonment, there was only one thing about the manor that confused the townspeople. There were absolutely no records of the building's existence. No documents of ownership, if the building changing hands. No building plans, no permit, not even a record of the purchase of the land the manor sat on! And yet there it was, standing tall and proud atop the hill.

It was this lack of existential evidence that one day led to the arrival of a scientist in the town. No one would have known he was a scientist if he didn't wear lab coats in various states of cleanliness wherever he went. He didn't ask anyone about the manor – he knew the rumours, the details; it was why he'd fixed up his disused car and driven all the way out there. For reasons unknown to the townsfolk he avoided the public library like the plague, even though many of the town's records were stored there.

The third day after his arrival the scientist with the caramel skin could be seen wandering up the hill towards the manor. Some of the children followed after him like rats to the Pied Piper, in awe of the man who showed no fear in approaching the house no one liked to go near. He wasn't aware of their presence. Headphones covered his ears, squishing his impressive envy-inspiring hair, and the cord travelled down to an iPod in one of his coat pockets. A small smile tugged at his lips as he walked.

The man's name was Carlos.

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><p>Over his time in Night Vale Carlos had come to accept numerous things he never would have considered before he arrived there. They involved angels – which of course did not exist – and rabid librarians, and, as fate would have it, a house which should exist, appears to exist, but absolutely does not exist. The information about a vaguely similar case <em>outside<em> of Night Vale had been brought to his attention by a relative of one of the members of his team of scientists, and, curious as to how it could possibly occur outside of the strange spatial and temporal distortions of his new home, Carlos decided to investigate. His team remained in Night Vale to monitor the house in Desert Creek and any of the potential developments that might pop up in his absence.

There was a significant downside to being outside of Night Vale, however. He no longer had access to Cecil's radio show, which he had come to rely upon both as a source of amusement and the only somewhat reliable source of news in the small community – especially since the newspaper switched over to imagination based stories. Thankfully for him, his beloved radio announcer just so happened to be his boyfriend, and so he'd at least managed to get shows from the archives downloaded to his iPod for him to listen to while he was gone.

It would keep him calm until he could figure out the subtle time differences between the two places so he could ring Cecil.

Carlos approached the manor on the hill prepared for absolutely anything, Cecil's soothing tones whispering in his ears with the news from weeks past.

It looked completely ordinary. A clean house, with clean windowpanes and what almost looked like fresh paint on the front door. There was always a chance that someone did live there, perhaps they were staying there illegally and didn't want to draw attention to their presence. That sort of explanation would never stand in Night Vale, but out in the real world that sort of thing was pretty commonplace. Wasn't it? Carlos could barely remember anymore. Ordinary was the new strange.

He paced around the outside of the house, one hand brushing across the porch railing, and took in what he could make out through the windows, which wasn't much. Once he arrived back at his starting point Carlos walked fearlessly up the few steps to the porch and approached the front door, a feat his scientists would have been too afraid to consider had they been there in his stead. The doors of unnatural houses were almost a sort of taboo, one which Carlos no longer feared breaking, not after the strange incident in Desert Creeks.

Removing his hand from the depths of his pocket Carlos curled his fingers into a fist and knocked loudly on the door, one, two, three times. He then dropped his hand, shoving it back in his pocket, and peered in the closest window, looking for any sign of movement in response.

Nothing.

Carlos nodded, as though he had expected as much, and returned to the door. His fingers clenched around his cell phone, an odd sense of unease welling up inside of him. It made his heart thump loudly in his chest, so much so that it nearly drowned out Cecil's voice completely.

Retrieving his phone he stared down at the glowing screen, opening a new text. He would call, but it was during broadcast hours, and he didn't feel like leaving a voicemail. There was just this little niggling feeling in the back of his mind that this wasn't going to go at all to plan.

_Cecil. I'm about to investigate the inside of the house. I love you._

Sappy. He didn't necessarily enjoy being sappy, since it wasn't very scientific, but it was hard not to be with Cecil. After sending it he waited patiently for a response, wanting one last piece of contact from his love before entering into the unknown. He didn't have to wait long.

_I love you too. Be careful. Stay safe._

Short and sweet. Carlos smiled down at the screen, imagining what Cecil was probably telling his listeners right now about his current situation. It used to bother him, how open Cecil was about everything they did together on the radio, but he'd long since gotten used to it. It was one of the ways Cecil displayed affection.

Shaking himself – knocking on a door, he'd already done that, it was a milestone achievement, now all he had to do was _open_ it – Carlos put his phone away and gripped the door handle. He turned it slowly and gave a slight push. The door swung open silently, without as much as a creak.

He took a deep breath, looking for the courage that, as a scientist, he didn't really naturally possess, and stepped inside the door, gently kicking it closed after him. It was sometime around the middle of the afternoon, so Carlos had no trouble seeing inside the house, as all the curtains were open and let the sun shine in. Compared to the outside of the house, the inside appeared to be in an odd state of disrepair, with everything having a worn quality to it which the house itself lacked. The wallpaper was peeling, dust covered the top of the television, and the couch was ripped and torn. Carlos moved carefully through the first floor, opening each door and investigating each room. There was nothing unusual to be found there, only cobwebs and dust.

Hanging his headphones around his neck, the sound of Cecil's voice still playing distantly from them, Carlos approached the staircase. The stairs creaked under his weight as he ascended them, but the remainder of the house stayed silent.

The second floor proved much more confusing than the first.

The first few rooms were empty – a bedroom, a second bathroom (all fairly modern too, for a house no one could remember being built). But then Carlos stepped into the study, and suddenly everything changed.

A young woman sat on the floor in the centre of the room, head down as she shakily tapped out messages on her phone. Carlos knocked on the doorframe, quietly at first and then louder, but she didn't respond. She didn't appear to have heard it at all. For a prolonged moment which seemed to stretch but was in reality just shy of a minute Carlos stared at her, perplexed.

Who was she? Where had she come from? Why couldn't she hear him? But as Cecil's voice turned once again to the topic of missing Station Interns, a thought occurred to Carlos. Surely, he told himself, there was no way. Still…

"_Dana?_"

No response.

Tugging his lab-coat tighter around him, as though it would offer some sort of scientific protection from the unknown, Carlos stepped further into the room, quietly approaching the texting figure.

Yes, he decided silently, crouching down next to her and glancing at the screen of her phone. This was definitely the same figure he recalled witnessing emerging from the house in Desert Creek, the spectre which had been visible yet not tangible, trapped in another time, another place. Hesitating briefly Carlos reached out, laying a gentle hand on Dana's shoulder. Her body gave no indication that she could feel his hand, but the muscle and bone beneath his palm were real enough. Her entire being was focussed solely on her phone. Instinctively he knew he would be unable to rouse her, regardless of what he tried.

Standing once again, brushing dust off his lab-coat and pants, Carlos pondered the manor. How was it possible for Dana to have found herself here, so very far from Night Vale? What unexplainable phenomenon could have caused this manor to be connected to the desert around the Night Vale area? _Was_ it connected, or had Dana made her way here some other way?

Too many questions, not enough answers.

To a scientist like Carlos, it was nigh unbearable – not because there were no answers, because he had become used to that sort of thing, but because they should have been outside of the influence of the unknown. But of course that was far too much to ask from the void of the universe now wasn't it?

Shuffling away from Dana's unresponsive figure Carlos glanced around the study. There were no other doors – no wardrobes or supply closets – so there was nothing left for him to do in there. Lifting Dana in an attempt to move her was unlikely to be successful, and he doubted his own physical capability to attempt it in the first place, so he had to leave her there. If he still remembered about it by the time he made it back down the hill he might enlist some helpers, but until then, he had more investigating to get to.

Leaving the study, avoiding looking at Dana more than necessary, Carlos headed back out into the main hallway. There were two doors left to open. One he assumed was another bedroom, the other a closet.

The bedroom was a bust – looking past the up-to-date technology and the dust there was nothing out of the ordinary. That left Carlos with one final door before he decided to leave the manor, altogether none the wiser about the manor and its oddities.

Squaring his shoulders Carlos wrapped one hand around his iPod in his pocket and the other around the door handle. He was beginning to wish he hadn't bothered coming all the way out here, it wasn't worth the time away from Cecil and Night Vale.

The door caught as he pulled, and as it came free he stumbled. It was only two feet forward, but it sent Carlos through the void inside the closet and out into the desert.

After righting himself Carlos stared in silent shock. A part of him had been expecting something like this to happen, but occasionally he did like to cling to the thought that the world outside of Night Vale had some sort of normality and order to it. Apparently not.

Taking a few steps out into the sand – the very familiar sand of the desert surrounding Night Vale – Carlos turned around, hoping perhaps to find the image of the manor superimposed over the empty desert he knew existed there. Instead he found himself staring at a door. Just a door. Or rather, an empty doorframe. It was the same colour as the doorframe of the closet, except there was no door. He could see through to the sand behind it.

"This is ridiculous," Carlos sighed exasperatedly, though his statement lacked heat. The situation itself wasn't ridiculous; what was ridiculous was that he'd bothered to investigate at all. The logical side of his brain was about ready to commit scientific suicide because he was so damn accepting of strange things being linked to his current home. If something was strange, it was probably their fault.

He wouldn't be investigating things out of town ever again. If he ever made it back to regular Night Vale to begin with.

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><p>Because so very many things in Night Vale didn't conform to the 'norm', it took a considerable length of time for Carlos to figure out which way he was supposed to walk in order to get back to town. It took even longer to actually get there.<p>

The sinister lack of helicopter activity did little to calm his nerves or make the walk pass by any quicker. He even would have appreciated one of the helicopters with pictures of diving birds of prey at this point. Or a StrexCorp helicopter. Anything really.

But walk he did, and though his lab-coat gave the majority of his body some semblance of protection from the sun, it was still the hot, hot, _hot_ desert, and water would have been nice. Or Gatorade. Hell, some wheat-free pizza wouldn't have gone amiss either.

The radio tower was really a sight for sore eyes, because Carlos knew he was getting a bit delusional if he was thinking wistfully about Big Rico's Pizza. It just wasn't the same since the wheat ban. It made mandatory dining that little bit more annoying.

Of course, getting into town was one thing, and walking straight _through_ one of his scientists was another.

He'd hypothesised that that might happen. Only he'd been hoping he would be wrong. It was… disconcerting, to say the least.

What had Cecil said? Be safe? Well, that was a technical impossibility in a situation like this. But it told Carlos where he wanted to go first, even if he couldn't really be seen.

Making an abrupt turn in the middle of the road Carlos headed towards the Night Vale Community Radio Station.

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><p>Pushing open the double doors Carlos found himself, well, anywhere other than the station lobby.<p>

It was a forest, but it was dark, menacingly so, and in no way enticing like the Whispering Forest was said to be (he'd stayed away from there after hearing the reports on the radio). Without looking he knew instinctively that the door through which he'd arrived there no longer existed. Regardless, he turned around, and came face to face with a solid obsidian wall.

It was unsettlingly familiar, and not just because of the scene in the desert. Cecil's voice was no longer issuing indecipherable murmurs from around his neck, as though the power had been cut, the battery of his iPod suddenly drained by unexplainable forces. He knew exactly where he was, and though he was surprised he was far from shocked. Some deep hidden part of him had expected something like this from the moment he first lay eyes on Dana.

How long had he been gone for now? He couldn't remember. Days at any rate. Maybe even a week. He wasn't sure how long he'd spent out in the desert, and he couldn't see the sky past the metallic trees around him.

The Dog Park. The one place people were never supposed to go and Carlos had managed to wind up smack bang in the centre of it. Cecil was sure to have a go at him if he ever made it out again.

If.

How very pessimistically realistic.

Carlos sighed, running a hand through his dark hair in agitation. This was _not_ how he'd planned on spending his time. He'd had all sorts of plans waiting in the wings for the next few weeks. New investigations, bowling with Cecil, dinner with Cecil, movie nights with Cecil… Basically he'd had a lot of plans with Cecil.

If he never made it out of the Dog Park, if he died wandering aimlessly through it (though it seemed unlikely, given Dana's long absence and relative health), the one thing he would regret more than anything else was not spending more time with Cecil, not saying any sort of proper farewell. Yeah, it would have been nice to one day actually work out some sort of scientific explanation for some of the crazy stuff that went on, but it wasn't important. It was more of a hobby now than anything, something with which to fill his time. _Cecil_ was important, nothing else.

Digging into his other pocket Carlos pulled out his phone. Though his iPod was dead, his phone wasn't, although it _was_ flickering erratically. There was a known interference toward incoming signals, but the Dog Park had yet to figure out how to disable outbound transmissions.

_Cecil. I don't know how, but I'm IN the Dog Park. I'm sorry, and I love you. Truly. You're more important than science, and I shouldn't have gone to investigate that manor in the first place._

Again, sappy. Carlos frowned at it, but pushed send anyway, before pocketing his phone and looking around.

Seriously. Metal trees.

"Whatever," Carlos sighed, and started walking.

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><p>Carlos would never know exactly how long he spent wandering the depths of the Dog Park, nor did he recall much of what he saw there. It was a mystery to him how he even made it out. But he did.<p>

He woke up in a bed at the Night Vale Hospital, Cecil slumped exhaustedly in a chair off to one side, and he shrugged it all off.

It didn't matter what had gone down in the Dog Park. All that mattered was it had set him free, eventually, and he should respect it by ceasing to think about it.

Now they just had to figure out how to get Dana back…


End file.
